More Amador County Real Estate Charts
Posted by John Lockwood on March 6th, 2007
Remember Ross Perot? Reform party presidential candidate whose voice sounded a lot like Frank Perdue’s.
Now there was a little short guy with big ears who loved his charts.
Lately I’m starting to feel like Ross Perot, because I’ve become enamored of charts. (Fortunately I’m still tall, and my ears are pretty average, and I have a nice baritone).
Anyway, this chart frenzy is probably a passing thing, a result of having created the mother of all Amador County real estate statistics spreadsheets.
But until the fever lifts, here’s the latest one — and I must say I really like this one because I’ve been able to draw an hourglass, using only Excel and MLS and some Polynomial Trend Lines.
Don’t feel bad, I had no idea what a Polynomial Trend Line was until I started falling under the influence of Ross Perot-ism. Fortunately for us, Microsoft’s Excel support tells us:
A polynomial trendline is a curved line that is used when data fluctuates. It is useful, for example, for analyzing gains and losses over a large data set.
The chart is below, and shows units sold and average days on market. As you can see, as the seller’s market reached its peak in late 2004 and early 2005, as we would expect, unit volume was up and the value for average days on market was down. Of course, as the market cooled, homes took longer to sell, and less of them sold.
As always, the real data is a jumbled mess, but by golly you get a pretty nifty picture when you throw in your polynomial trend lines.
I don’t know why Maureen Francis thinks statistics are dull.
